Good manners

It’s fairly safe to say that when the experimental Lohner-Porsche became the world’s first four-wheel-drive car in 1899 its designers did not anticipate that exactly a century later another prestigious German manufacturer would launch a rather more successful 4WD that was — in one respect — technologically less advanced. That earlier car was powered by an electric motor fitted to each wheel, which is the sort of technology that manufacturers such as BMW, makers of the X5, are now beginning to look at.